Recently in Economy Category

Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) on the GOP's "first move" should they gain the majority in the mid-terms: "House Republicans' first move in the majority would be to extend tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year, House GOP Conference Chairman Mike Pence (Ind.) suggested Wednesday evening.  Pence, the third-ranking Republican in the House, said that House Republicans would look to extend the tax cuts they helped President George W. Bush pass in 2001...

How did we get here? Given that Republican policies and practices led us to the brink of another Great Depression less than 2 years ago, how did we get to a world where the GOP polls ahead in every category dealing with the economy?How did Democrats go from a clear mandate for change, as evidenced by voters giving them the White House and once-in-a-generation majorities in both Houses of Congress, to the increasingly real prospect...

But we can't raise their taxes, they're the job creators: "The Institute for Policy Studies  released its annual report on executive compensation today... [T]he report found that "CEOs of the 50 firms that have laid off the most workers since the onset of the economic crisis took home nearly $12 million on average in 2009." Those CEOs' combined compensation totaled $598 million, while at the same time, their companies eliminated 531,363 jobs despite reporting a...

One of the things that always sticks in my craw is how conservatives tell us they have always been the deficit hawks and how the Democrats are the so-called "tax and spend party." I guess the beats the "just spend party." Economists have argued about the importance of budget sanity. Financial advisors will tell you that it is always best to borrow when interest rates are low and it is always best to save when...

Robert Shapiro at Sonecon via Ezra Klein at the Washington Post (emphasis added): "From December 2007 to July 2009 - the last year of the Bush second term and the first six months of the Obama presidency, before his policies could affect the economy - private sector employment crashed from 115,574,000 jobs to 107,778,000 jobs. Employment continued to fall, however, for the next six months, reaching a low of 107,107,000 jobs in December of 2009....

From Ezra Klein at the Washington Post:            ...

Then and now. June of 2009 (emphasis added) :"General Motors hopes that bankruptcy will make the struggling automaker stronger and more competitive. Republicans are hoping it will do the same for them.The GOP sees President Barack Obama's decision to help the unpopular carmaker as an easy opportunity to paint him as a bailout-happy, deficit-drunk spendthrift eager to impose a heavy government hand on a swath of industries. ...Republicans see in GM a chance for their...

Once upon a time, the United States (as well as the rest of the world) was in economic peril. The private sector was not creating jobs and people were afraid to invest money in the face of a stock market in freefall. A new kind of politician came forward and suggested that government spending could get the United States economy out of deadlock. He would create government jobs in the hopes that their spending would...

Not that Republicans are serious about this balanced budget amendment nonsense, but let's take a look at what it might look like if it had been in effect in 2009. If, as the amendment would require, federal spending could not exceed federal revenue. Federal revenues for 2009 totaled $2.105 trillion:Mandatory, as in required by law, spending plus interest on the national debt totaled $2.148 trillion: That means nothing for Defense, nothing for Homeland Security, nothing...

Steve Benen at Washington Monthly quoting Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute, after today's jobs report which showed a gain of 71,000 jobs in the private sector but a loss of 202,000 (143,000 of those census workers) in the public sector: "The economic case for more government action to create jobs is about as clear as they come." It's crystal clear. What is needed is government spending to create jobs, the much-maligned (by the...